Answer this question truthfully
### Question: What causes Pernicious anemia?
### Response: The body needs vitamin B12 to make red blood cells. To provide vitamin B12 to your blood cells, you need to eat enough foods containing vitamin B12, such as meat, poultry, shellfish, eggs, and dairy products. To absorb vitamin B12, your body uses a special protein called intrinsic factor, which is released by cells in the stomach. The combination of vitamin B12 bound to intrinsic factor is absorbed in the last part of the small intestine.
When the stomach does not make enough intrinsic factor, the intestine cannot properly absorb vitamin B12.
Very rarely, infants and children are born without the ability to produce enough intrinsic factor, or the ability to absorb the combination of intrinsic factor and vitamin B12 in the small intestine. Pernicious anemia that occurs at birth (congenital) is inherited. You need the defective gene from each parent to get it.
Common causes of pernicious anemia include:
Weakened stomach lining (atrophic gastritis) The body's immune system attacking the cells that make intrinsic factor (autoimmunity against gastric parietal cells) or intrinsic factor itself
The disease begins slowly and may take decades to fully establish. Although the congenital form occurs in children, pernicious anemia usually does not appear before age 30 in adults. The average age at diagnosis is 60.